The Clown and the Fuhrer

“Hitler Painted Roses,” a provocative short story by Harlan Ellison, looks at the one moment in time when all the denizens in hell are allowed out for a day.

All leave but Adolf Hitler, a painter in real life, who chooses to stay behind to continue painting gorgeous frescoes of roses on the walls of hell.

I may be off on a detail or two — the tale pegs to Lizzie Borden’s visiting her family that day — but the gist is true.

The story popped into my brain while I was reading up on Wednesday’s screening of “The Clown and the Fuhrer,” a Spanish film based on a real meeting between the Nazi dictator and renowned Catalonian clown Charlie Rivel in Berlin in 1944.

The basics:

A Gestapo agent asks Rivel (Ferran Rane) and his partner to perform for Hitler on his birthday. The SS officer, who’s yearned to be a clown, insists he act with the performers.

The Nazi deports the partner, whose Jewish wife was murdered by Germans, and replaces him with a new clown, who’s much more than he seems.

The absurdity of the situation tapped into my memory of Ellison’s reading his bizarre but compelling story before a packed house in Cleveland, Ohio, when I was a teenager.

“The Clown and the Fuhrer,” a blend of black-and-white archival footage and colorful, newly shot footage, screens at 7:30 p.m. Wednesday in the Screening Room in Yerba Buena Center for the Arts, 701 Mission St., San Francisco.

Alfred Hitchcock plays spy-vs.-spy in “Notorious,” a slick 1946 thriller with Cary Grant as a U.S. agent who violates the guy code by recruiting the love of his life (Ingrid Bergman) to do her sexy voodoo with the leader of a Nazi spy network (Claude Rains) in Brazil.

Look for Hitch in a cameo chugging champagne.

The film plays at 8 p.m. May 1 at the Paramount Theatre, 2025 Broadway, Oakland. Doors open at 7 p.m. The show includes a period newsreel, cartoons, previews, a raffle and a serenade by the Wurlitzer organ.

Tickets, at $5, can be bought at the theater box office, ticketmaster.com or 800-745-3000.

More $5 tix

Granted, the Three Stooges comedies are a guy thing. Women — OK, most women of my acquaintance — don’t get the comedy in the eye-poking, head-smacking or body-bashing.

It’s one of those Venus-Mars peculiarities destined to keep our sexes raising eyebrows at each other’s tastes ad infinitum — an expression you’ll never hear in a Stooges movie.

As part of its “Five Buck Tuesdays,” the Castro Theatre, 429 Castro St., San Francisco, will screen “Curly’s Greatest Hits,” two-plus hours of Stooges two-reelers, beginning at 2:30, 5 and 8 p.m. Tuesday.

Among the titles are “Microphonies,” “We Want Our Mummy” (nyuk, nyuk), “Disorder in the Court” and “Hoipolloi.”

Tickets, at $5, can be bought at the door. For more info, call 415-621-5288 or visit www.castrotheatre.com.

Save your sheckels

Disney is, how shall we say it, rereleasing or rerereleasing “Snow White and the Seven Dwarfs,” the granddaddy of animated classics, this time in high definition.

It’s coming out as a Blu-ray combo pack containing two Blu-ray discs and a DVD version Oct. 6.

If you don’t have a Blu-ray player, you can wait for the “Deluxe 2-Disc Classic” standard-definition rererelease Nov. 24.

Or you can feel happy with the copy you already own.

The tale of the pretty princess with bad taste in apples earned an honorary Oscar for “significant screen innovation” in 1939.

It’s also on Turner Classic Movies’ recent list of the 15 most influential films of all time.

Songs in the key of grieving

OK, so they’re turning “Sleepless in Seattle” into a stage musical.

First reaction: Why?

Second: Oh, boy, an onstage lake for the houseboat.

Reportedly, producer David Shor and his minions have already penned 18 songs for “Sleepless in Seattle — The Musical,” “with more on the way.”

They’ll probably do a song-and-dance atop the Empire State Building. If ever a gorilla were missed … .

Composer/lyricist Leslie Bricusse (“Stop the World, I Want to Get Off,” “Victor/Victoria”) is attached to the project, scheduled for a first reading in May and opening in early 2010.